I'm a Chicana, a Mexican-American, an American citizen born in this embarrassing land called Texas who is rendered almost speechless by the continued impoverished, dream-toppling politics of the chosen tribe they call conservatives in this state. Are these people on drugs? Only legal ones, probly. But they're living in the dreams of the past, the myths, the legends, the belief they would always have Texas as theirs, when, surprise! It belongs to all of us.
I have not been able to write about it cause the continued legislative hate is worser than a tsunami, a Joplin-category tornado, a Gulf Coast oil spill, it's been a series of Katrinaesque pendejadas coming out of that big-hair empty-headed Governor Perry and his ilk that make me....wanna cuss and spit.
So I will. Like who could possibly vote for a man who is proud of giving us a state when we could be the next silicon valley, but instead we're building more pulgas and jails? Of course corporations like to come here, we don't like unions and if you want to spew your basura, go for it. And get a gun while you're at it, and take it to college too. We've now returned to the past behind John Wayne, and it won't be over until somebody shoots at this movie. Bam-bam.
Is that progress or what?
This tribe of fear and John Wayne wannabes have beaten me up. Yes, I am bruised, battered, poor for daring to write in a state that dares to deny children the love of reading, denies the best immigrant-born children the right to go to college and treats them like criminals, and if they could, they'd deport me too. But I'm not out yet.
Confession: My birth certificate was misspelled in the fifties when I was born -- they don't know how to write French names in this state -- and if my late mother hadn't sworn on a stack of Bibles in Austin that yes, she remembered my birth and the midwife, as I was getting my passport, who knows, who friggin knows what the next legislature will do.
Where to start talking about Texas? How to stop? We're at the bottom of everything, you name it. Pollution. Education. Millions in prisons and we spend zillions for that. Obese, a nice word for gorditos. We have the biggest guts and that's because we won't tolerate mass transit so we can walk. Hell no! This is Texas, and real men have trucks. If it wasn't for all the Mexican immigration, legal and otherwise, I don't know who'd work on our tires, roofs, restaurants and clean our hotels, but let's pretend the brown ones aren't over 40% of the state population and that your children and grandchildren will be brown too. Dream on...And what kind of state will we become then? Ask Steve Murdock, the demographer whose work I admire and if the legislature can't read, then why bother? We don't have a state insurance tax now, depending on property taxes, and live in the dark ages with our regressive sales taxes. I probably pay more taxes than the Governor, cause he gets loopholes.
I could go on, but I won't. I do know our oppressive laws may blunt the inevitable changes, but change is comin'. Like it or not, baby. I got my degree outside this state no thanks to Texas, and
there's just enough of us who can write and think and have also read the Bible and agree on the profound story of it, unlike our Governor, who has turned it into a prop and carries it with his coyote-killing gun. Or maybe the money he's made stealing this land for himself and his cronies gets him real good hairspray. Or maybe he's got just enough Mexican or Black in that hair, and this is what happens when you forget how we are all descended from the same tribe.
I have not been able to write about it cause the continued legislative hate is worser than a tsunami, a Joplin-category tornado, a Gulf Coast oil spill, it's been a series of Katrinaesque pendejadas coming out of that big-hair empty-headed Governor Perry and his ilk that make me....wanna cuss and spit.
So I will. Like who could possibly vote for a man who is proud of giving us a state when we could be the next silicon valley, but instead we're building more pulgas and jails? Of course corporations like to come here, we don't like unions and if you want to spew your basura, go for it. And get a gun while you're at it, and take it to college too. We've now returned to the past behind John Wayne, and it won't be over until somebody shoots at this movie. Bam-bam.
Is that progress or what?
This tribe of fear and John Wayne wannabes have beaten me up. Yes, I am bruised, battered, poor for daring to write in a state that dares to deny children the love of reading, denies the best immigrant-born children the right to go to college and treats them like criminals, and if they could, they'd deport me too. But I'm not out yet.
Confession: My birth certificate was misspelled in the fifties when I was born -- they don't know how to write French names in this state -- and if my late mother hadn't sworn on a stack of Bibles in Austin that yes, she remembered my birth and the midwife, as I was getting my passport, who knows, who friggin knows what the next legislature will do.
Where to start talking about Texas? How to stop? We're at the bottom of everything, you name it. Pollution. Education. Millions in prisons and we spend zillions for that. Obese, a nice word for gorditos. We have the biggest guts and that's because we won't tolerate mass transit so we can walk. Hell no! This is Texas, and real men have trucks. If it wasn't for all the Mexican immigration, legal and otherwise, I don't know who'd work on our tires, roofs, restaurants and clean our hotels, but let's pretend the brown ones aren't over 40% of the state population and that your children and grandchildren will be brown too. Dream on...And what kind of state will we become then? Ask Steve Murdock, the demographer whose work I admire and if the legislature can't read, then why bother? We don't have a state insurance tax now, depending on property taxes, and live in the dark ages with our regressive sales taxes. I probably pay more taxes than the Governor, cause he gets loopholes.
I could go on, but I won't. I do know our oppressive laws may blunt the inevitable changes, but change is comin'. Like it or not, baby. I got my degree outside this state no thanks to Texas, and
there's just enough of us who can write and think and have also read the Bible and agree on the profound story of it, unlike our Governor, who has turned it into a prop and carries it with his coyote-killing gun. Or maybe the money he's made stealing this land for himself and his cronies gets him real good hairspray. Or maybe he's got just enough Mexican or Black in that hair, and this is what happens when you forget how we are all descended from the same tribe.
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